Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

unexpected) patterns of this sort in the crosslinguistic patterning of UVR systems: those
which are categorical or phonological in nature, and those which are gradient or phonetic.
The former are the consequence of a true neutralization, a merger of phonological
entities, while are the latter are cases of phonetic approximation or overlap of realizations
conditioned by durational pressure on articulation. I have also shown that far more UVR
patterns than were previously thought in fact belong to that gradient, phonetic type,
including that of Standard Bulgarian and Degree 2 of reduction in Brazilian Portuguese
and Russian, Furthermore, I have presented the phonologization model as the link
between the two categories, the force which transforms the latter into the former. That the
categorical patterns should frequently be explicable with reference to phonetic tendencies
or perceptual limitations is because they are more often than not the direct result in a
diachronic sense of those actual tendencies. Some patterns, however, such as Seediq,
clearly have their origins elsewhere, but it is in no way obvious that this unnatural
conception ultimately causes them to behave synchronically any differently than patterns
with clean phonetic pedigrees. Unless it can be shown otherwise, therefore, there is no
reason to believe that their synchronic phonological implementation should be in any way
formally distinct from those others either. The phonologization approach to typological
regularity, based as it is on the diachronic development of real phonetic patterns, makes
predictions about which types of UVR systems should be attested and which types which
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